William Edelen: My Writing Philosophy

I have been writing essays and columns for newspapers and Journals for over 40 years. My objective and focus from the very beginning has been to clear the religious debris of superstition and rediscover truth and facts in biblical studies and religious literacy.

In Greek, “apophasis” means denial or negation. The Greek word has the connotation of AFFIRMATION through negation as reflected in “Negative Theology”. It is a historical movement that begins with Plato, and it involved disposing of the myths of the Olympian gods, while AFFIRMING a revised version of the Unknown God, the unreachable, unmanifest but IMMANENT DEITY.

One of my strongest lectures, given to many University audiences over the past 30 years has been on the subject of REDEFINING GOD. I have given this lecture to full auditoriums many times from the University of Colorado, Pueblo, to Boise State University, to Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, to the University of California, Santa Barbara, to the College of Santa Rosa, CA. and others. The lecture has always been received from standing ovations to lengthy applause.

Obviously it was, and is, a subject on the minds of many thinking human beings who are tired and embarrassed by the continuing pablum of a multitude of “preachers” and so called “religious” columns in countless newspapers and magazines.

“Negative Theology” (apophasis) was in its ultimate brilliance in the writings of Heraclitus, and Meister Eckhart, which dispelled a thousand years of encrusting myth that obscured the light of truth. Their writings were unembellished and unperfumed. People with false deep-seated opinions and beliefs are not only shocked, shaking, quivering and offended, but are confronted with new insights into the Mystery of the Divine energy that saturates the Universe.

It is Eckhart writing 800 years ago: “to watch a child pouring milk into a glass is to see God pouring God into God” and again “The eye by which I see God is the same eye as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are the one and the same”…and again: “seeking God is like sitting on an ox looking for an ox to ride.”

With this consciousness, the Ultimate Reality, or Mystery of the Sacred, is apprehended directly without any mediation. Subject and object become ONE in a timeless, spaceless act that is ineffable and gloriously joyful. Beauty, light and love are seen as pervading the entire universe, including the individual self now merged in ONENESS with all the creation. The experience transcends the reach of any language.

Negative Theology crushes the superstitions of a God “out there” as a “window peeker” watching each one of us… or a being “out there separate from “down here”. The Dualism of a God “out there” constantly separates man and woman from God, nature from man, and spirit from matter.

No “Gods” are involved. The Universe and all that is was not “made” by some immortal being. But always WAS and WILL BE an eternal fire, arising and subsiding in measure. No beginning and no end. The Great Mystery for the billions of galaxies… as Taoism has always affirmed, as well as negative theologians and current Emersons and Thoreaus. The affirmation is something of a beyond understanding or comprehension beauty. The latest cosmology seems to agree that even the so-called BIG BANG may NOT have been the beginning of anything except the formation of our particular universe, which one day may “collapse” in on itself only to “arise” again, or it may be only one of many such universes engaged in the same rhythm. “God is a verb…not a noun” wrote Buckminster Fuller.

Perhaps this short essay explains my focus as a writer for these long and good years. To open up for new light the superstitions of many that have kept their brains in a mental concentration camp. The bottom line (as they say) is this: THROUGH NEGATION WE COME TO KNOW SOMETHING POSITIVELY. It has smashed old jars, chipped away at the accumulated crust of archaic beliefs that have obscured more beautiful and profound truths.

Those who smash jars and chip away crust have often been in the stream of mysticism. Carl Jung observed that: “The Creative Mystic has always been a thorn in the side of the dogmatic church, but it is to the Mystic that we owe all that is best in religion and humanity.”

This has been my life focus as a writer… walking TOWARD THE MYSTERY.
~~

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Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who thinks atheists are missing out because we don’t have cool hats like other religious people, says there are some Protestants who believe in a childish version of faith… [According to atheists, religious people] are also supposed to believe in a God who answers prayers here below and gives us goodies if [Read More...]

This is a neat project.Matt Cubberly wrote a book introducing children to evolution via poetry and neat illustrations by May Villani. It's called Evolutionary Tales and they're raising funds for it on Kickstarter:

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

What is not worth doing, is not worth doing well. ~Abraham Maslow

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Zeno Stoics

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~ Cicero